Film

So, this time last year I pledged to blog every Monday for a year. Why? Well, because my blogging had pretty much dried up. The last few years had come and gone with only a few posts to show for them. So to herald the eleventh year of this blog – yes, that’s right eleven years, I thought I would see if I could commit to writing another 52 entries.

I’ve been strict and I’ve held to it although it’s been difficult at times. Some Mondays I’ve only just managed to get the post up before midnight….

It can also be hard to generate the energy for writing. Content can also be a problem. This is primarily a crafty blog but, like everyone else, I go through periods where I’m just not doing anything crafty. That can be for a whole raft of reasons, I might just be busy with something else like my garden or decorating a room. With gardening I can take a photo and I guess I could of the room but that green paint stubbornly refuses to allow itself to be captured in pixels.

So this week I’ve been moving furniture back into my bedroom, sorting through old clothes, reading, going to the cinema and watching tv. Oh and of course working at my dayjob. I’ve looked longingly at my knitting several times but haven’t knit a stitch.

The things that I want to work on are these two cabled Ysolda berets. Both of them have been WiPs for a few years.

So hopefully I’ll be able to sit down and work a few rows on one soon.

Now that my Monday blogging challenge is at an end I probably won’t be blogging every week. I think I’ll only blog if I have something that I feel is blog worthy. I say that but I may feel differently next Monday, I may still blog then. Time will tell.

Yep, I’m still writing, so much so that I even took a day off work to attempt to write 10,000 words in one day. I completed the challenge but it was incredibly hard and took me the best part of twelve hours. It also left me with RSI in my right wrist. I had to take a day off writing after that but I’m still over the halfway mark and ahead in my word count goal which is all good. 🙂

No crafty things achieved this week unfortunately.

Before I forget, I saw Argo on Friday and very excellent it was, too. Check out the trailer

It sounds like a strange 1960s team-up show, I know. But the madness of National Novel Writing Month is almost upon me. I have only two days of sanity and freedom left before November first.

Back in February I pledged to blog every Monday for a year. Some of my entries have been a bit scrappy and brief but they’ve still been there. So that won’t change but they may still be short. The word count gadget will be on the blog too. I honesty have no idea how it’s going to go this year. I have less of a plot idea than last year so I’m going to be doing even more creating on the fly than usual. My craft output may suffer I’m not really sure.

Ok, so it’s red and there are cables. Oh and it’s for me 🙂 No idea when I’ll finish it of course…:)

I love my job, I get to speak to the most fascinating people. Today I got to chat to a security expert about James Bond. He recommended that I read some of the Fleming novels so I’m going to add Casino Royale to the ever increasing pile of books by the side of my bed.

I’m only a recent convert to Bond. Casino Royale was the first Bond film I’d ever seen at the cinema. It was a breath of fresh air. Prior to that Bond films were a sort of boring, sexist kind of stain on Bank Holiday tv schedules. Although, even that said I’ve always had a fondness for the original 1960s Bond. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is still one of my favourite films. Perhaps it’s just the Roger Moore films that I have an aversion towards?

Seeing Skyfall – and if you haven’t already, run don’t walk to see it – made me want to revisit the 60s Bond films and watch CR again. I’ve got a subscription to Sky’s NOW TV film streaming service and they have all the Bond films ready to stream so since I couldn’t find my dvd copy I tried streaming it. Awful. It was like the worst You Tube-esque copy ever. So I had to quickly give up on it and find another copy. I did stream OHMSS and that was a lot better. Watched half of Dr No and then fell asleep. I did rewatch CR – it’s still brilliant – and the quite appalling Quantum of Solace over the rest of the weekend. When Bond’s best chat up line is “do you want to help me find the stationary?”, you know that it’s not really going very well…

Another issue with Quantum is that I forever associate it with these alternate theme songs by the legendary Adam & Joe.

I’ve never blocked a scarf before but I’m tempted to block this one so that the yarn over design shows up

Another view

Unfortunately I don’t have anything new to show you this week. I’ve had to stop and start a few projects including, Wild as the Wind, where I’ve ripped everything out and changed the yarn and needles. Most of my energy this week has gone into decluttering, again. Yes, again. I seem to do this a couple of times a year. Well, I say that but what I really mean is that I take some things from one room and put them in another. This time I’ve been taking things to the tip and recycling centre instead. I have some bookcases on my landing and they used to have boxes of crap, sorry, I mean vitally important things, in front of them. They don’t anymore. This has brought the added benefit of my no longer having to do contortions in order to switch off the landing light. This is good.

My plan is to finish off the reorganising before my birthday on Saturday. I have next week off and hope to make another dress, watch a few fillums and possibly do a bit of cooking or baking. 🙂

I haven’t blogged in over two months! Oh lots of reasons why, mainly due to lack of time, and that’s also why KnitCast is late. The Welsh general election has kept me busy at work and sorting through my various hoardings, desperately trying to downsize has kept me a little busy too.

Last weekend I sorted through twenty years worth of clothes. Yes. TWENTY YEARS! I actually had stuff from far back as 14. Hannah helped me and joked that she could see the various stages I’d been through in life, including the extended Goth period. Which never really went away entirely. I gave 99.9 per cent of it away to charity, Hannah and others had some too. I feel really good about it because now I can buy more clothes with impunity. Ummmm….can’t I?! 🙂

Now onto KnitCast. That’s mainly been delayed because I haven’t quite made the switch from editing audio on a PC to editing audio on a Mac. It’s a bit ironic considering that I am Mac mad and rather evangelical about them! A certain Mac friend of mine is probably laughing at this! Although Macs are superior to PCs, don’t crash as often, don’t really get viruses etc. they also don’t have as many software programs written for them. So my main bug bare is that Nero Wave Editor which I used to use to edit is not available for the Mac. I can’t edit quite as finely with Audacity as I’d like and anyone who’s listened to Knitcast will know how I love my editing. I think though that I may have to worry less about editing since I would like to get a podcast out before the end of the month.

And speaking of podcasting, I’m hoping to record some interviews when I go on holiday to New York in July. I’ll be there for the first week of July and I have some ideas for interviews and I’ll be contacting people soon about those. However I do want to leave the majority of my trip for shopping! It’ll be my third visit to NYC and my second trip to the Garment District. I’m really looking forward to it! Let’s hope I don’t go over my baggage weight allowance on the way home!

I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I was going to blog about today but Jeni has tagged me so I’m going to finish with the Seven Random Things About Me…warning they are very random!

* I love Woody Allen films, although I tend to prefer his earlier, funnier ones! (in joke!) My favourites are Manhattan and Annie Hall. I can never choose between the two and have watched both far too many times to count.

* I’ve wanted to live in America since I was a kid. I intend to fulfill this dream one day 🙂

* Madonna – I’ve been a fan of hers for nearly twenty two years! I still have lace gloves from my teenage years!

* Spring is my favourite season. I love seeing the bulbs come up and trees blossom after a cold winter.

* Nature makes me feel very spiritual. There’s something godlike almost in growing things from seed and I also have a quiet fascination with how numbers appear in nature. However I’m crap at maths!

* I love order but somehow always end up in chaos. I’m incredibly untidy!

* I’m really into astrology. Well ok, I do read several horoscopes each day and pick and choose which bits I like, but I do think there’s more than an element of truth in them.

Now I have to decide whom to tag…I’ll have to think about that and update this later

I *love* this birthday card given to me by my friend Liz! It’s fab! I think Mariko will appreciate this card! I also want to find out where you can buy sprinkles shaped like stars.

I’m so tired. Saturday was a very long day because we did make it to the market early, it was very hot and later there were delays in getting back home. Travelling from France back to the UK was not the problem, that was great and very efficent, but there were delays in getting from London to Cardiff.

I tried to blog from Paris but my typepad email didn’t work. Here’s a brief taste of our Paris trip – Thursday was my birthday and our first full day in Paris. We did some shopping including buying yarn and chocolate at Le Bon Marche and Le Grande Epicerie and saw Batman Begins at the cinema. It was a VO, version orginale, and had French subtitles that weren’t distracting. It was great and the audience broke out into applause at the end! Of course I put a lot of its success down to the fact that Batman is played by a Welshman!:-)

I’m even more tired today because we only managed to sleep for a couple of hours last night. It was unbearably hot and neither of us could get to sleep. It also didn’t help when at about 2 or 3am, I forget the exact time, some noisy people in one of the flats next door to us came home and decided to talk very loudly and play music. I couldn’t tune it out.

Oh and I’ve had some problems sending and receiving email since I got home. I think it’s ok now but I will be resending out some emails that I don’t think got through.

More on our trip tomorrow and my meeting with the lovely Kate Gilbert and her other half!

Since Andy’s Valentine’s gift hadn’t arrived in time I said that I would assemble the soft toy Corgi kit I’d given to him as one of his Christmas presents. His gradparents used to breed corgis so he likes them a lot. I started it last night after we came home from our meal at the Japanese noodle bar. The instructions aren’t the clearest and I ended up having the ears on twice after I made a mistake. I’d also forgotten how difficult it is to sew fur fabrics especially when they’re in such small pieces.

Today I finished his head and started on his body.

Now it’s certainly not the best stitching effort ever. As you can see one of his ears is bigger than the other and he’s slightly cock eyed! But he’s still cute! 🙂

Tomorrow I’ll finish the sewing and we may even get around to stuffing him.

Haven’t done a great deal of knitting today, did a bit on the second Trekking sock and plan on making a little headway on the multi yarn scarf before bed.

Tonight we saw Something’s Gotta Give starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. For my review head over to The Film Review Blog.